Primary sources we use
Facts on this site come from first-party sources wherever they exist. In practice that means:
- The Steam store page — price, platforms, system requirements, supported languages, and the feature list. The feature list is often the first place a change shows up, ahead of the written description.
- The official announcements feed — read through Steam’s news API rather than the rendered news page, because the API returns the developers’ text verbatim along with a raw publication timestamp. Page scrapes can serve cached copies and miss the newest post.
- The Steam achievements page — achievement names, unlock conditions and global unlock rates.
- The developers’ own site and official Discord — for anything the store page doesn’t cover.
- SteamDB — referenced only as a cross-check channel; we do not republish their concurrent-player or price figures on this site (those are Steam / SteamDB’s job; see our About page for the full scope of what this site covers and what it deliberately doesn’t).
- Established games press — used to corroborate, and only when the outlet quotes or links something primary.
- Steam reviews and discussion boards — used for player experience only, and always labelled as player reports rather than stated as fact.
How we verify
- Official first. Where an official statement exists, it wins. Where it doesn’t, we say so instead of filling the gap.
- Two independent sources for anything load-bearing. If we only have one, the page says so.
- Every date carries a timezone. We publish dates in UTC and label them, because platform pages show announcement dates in the reader’s own timezone — an update posted at 16:14 UTC is already “tomorrow” for a large part of the world. Bare dates cause exactly the kind of disagreement that makes guides look unreliable.
- Time-sensitive facts get re-checked on a schedule. Prices, review scores, achievement unlock rates and patch status change; we re-read them rather than letting a launch-week snapshot sit there.
- We date every page. Each guide shows when it was last verified, not just when it was written.
What we do when sources disagree
The most recent official statement wins, and we show the older wording alongside it with its date rather than quietly deleting it. Local co-op is the clearest example: the developers said “late August” on July 30, changed it to “the next few weeks” on August 4, and shipped it on August 12. All three are real; only the last one is current. Guides that copied the first wording without dating it now tell readers the feature doesn’t exist.
What we won’t publish
- Invented fixes. If a problem has no documented solution, we say the developers haven’t addressed it and point to the official bug thread — we don’t pad the page with generic troubleshooting steps that were never tested against this game.
- Redemption codes. Machine Party has no code system. Any site listing codes for it is making them up.
- Mod download links. We’ll describe what community mods do and what they require, but we don’t host or link downloads, because we can’t vouch for third-party binaries.
- Piracy links or references. Ever.
- Guesses dressed as answers. Where something is inferred rather than stated, the page says the developers haven’t addressed it.
Corrections
If something here is out of date or wrong, it’s worth telling us — the fastest way to check any claim yourself is the official Steam page and its announcements feed, which is where most of this site ultimately comes from.